


To Have Loved Him

by sofriel



Category: Historical - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-11
Updated: 2010-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:39:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofriel/pseuds/sofriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Have Loved Him

**Author's Note:**

> Based on actual, real-life slashiness between the two. Told from the perspective of Melville, who was clearly more obsessed with Hawthorne than the other way around.

He remembers the date more clearly than his own birthday and celebrates it more religiously than any holiday. _August 5. The summer of 1895. _The first sight of Nathaniel Hawthorne, drenched from rain, sitting atop a mountain, at a picnic. The details crystallize and it may have been perfect but he is no longer fit to judge.

Because Hawthorne (and then he was Hawthorne, the great author, not _Nathaniel my dearest friend) _is amazing. He struggles through this novel, which he will call Moby-Dick, and Hawthorne’s writing is effortless. Hawthorne is a genius to him, even though he is nothing to Hawthorne.

It takes exactly three nights and a bottle of brandy for Hawthorne to become Nathaniel. And damn it if he wasn’t right when he wrote about Nathaniel’s stories, his dark side is darker than the far side of the _moon. _How can he be an optimist when all he believes in is sin, sin, sin? But that doesn’t matter just then, because Nathaniel is talking to him as an equal and listening to his bizarre wanderlust and not laughing.

It takes much, much longer to get under his skin. Nathaniel gets him to pour out his soul and gives back a few drops, and he never really knows what Nathaniel thinks of him. All he can do is hope maybe Nathaniel will notice the way he looks at him, the way he looked at his wife when they were first married but times a hundred in intensity, and pray (if he cared to really believe) that he will reciprocate.

And it is about this time, the era of long chats into the night about philosophy and life and furtive glancing, that he realizes he is in love. He agonizes at first, and then everything just goes on like before. Except every time they brush together he imagines it is something else and then he can’t be dealt with, like a lovesick adolescent. 

Nathaniel writes a short story that goes badly, and instead of discussion they drink and drink. And tears start running down Nathaniel’s face as he empties his heart, until his friend can’t stand it and cups his cheek and kisses away the tears. He waits until Nathaniel stops crying and takes his hand before he kisses him properly, letting himself fall onto the older man, two bodies flush against each other under the stars.  Those are the days he always remembers when he thinks of Nathaniel his dearest friend.

It doesn’t last. He wants to cry when Nathaniel goes to Britain, even though Nathaniel kissed him and told him nothing would ever change. Without Nathaniel, people stop buying his books and times are tough, and Nathaniel promises a job that ends up falling through. His opinion of the man doesn’t waver, even when Nathaniel’s letter has some stains on it that might be dried tears. Not even when Nathaniel stops writing.

When he travels to the Holy Land, it is the last time he will ever see his beloved friend, even though he doesn’t think of it that way. Things are awkward between them now, but he will never stop feeling privileged to be with Nathaniel, who is still the great author even when he maybe is no longer his dearest friend.

(And when he travels to the Holy Land, he brings Nathaniel along with him, in his dreams. He calls him Vine and they don’t speak, just silence and their gazes and the way they touch is enough in his head.) And it _is_ enough, and maybe that’s the problem with them, because he will accept this version of Nathaniel inside his fantasy.

He breaks down when he receives the news of Nathaniel’s death. He doesn’t find out from the papers or the obituaries; Sophia Hawthorne sends him a letter personally.  His own wife tries to comfort him as he sobs, but it can’t fix anything. In a fit of anger and sorrow, he burns all of Nathaniel’s letters to him, and by the time he realizes what he has done, it’s irreversible. He knows what they say by heart, anyway.

It’s the hardest to sit down and write again, but he does it because he is poor enough as it is. Still, the first thing he writes is for _Nathaniel my dearest friend. _And he thinks, no one will ever know.

_To have known him, to have loved him_

_After loneness long;_

_And then to be estranged in life;_

_And neither in the wrong; _

_And now for death to set his seal—_

_Ease me, a little ease, my song!_

-from “Monody,” by Herman Melville


End file.
